Lady Neon

No urban magician can really agree on the origins of Lady Neon.  Which is, for any academic magician, an excellent thing, since there’s nothing quite like certainty to dampen the potential for highly paid papers, conferences and consultancy groups of the subject.  However, one story stands out more than any other, and it goes something like this…

Once upon a time, in days of yore, the magic of the world lay in the land.  Wizards and witches walked the muddy paths between forests where the trees sang to each other and the water of the river whispered of mountains and seas; sorcerers sang and ivy grew, druids opened their fingers to the sky and the rain fell, and everything was, all things considered, pretty fine and dandy.  The dryads were scantily clad, the unicorns didn’t smell too bad, and the centaurs appreciated a good pint in the pub.  It was the time of classical magic, and at the heart of classical magic there was, hidden in fog and shadows but undeniably beating away, the Faerie Court, ruled by the Faerie Queen.  And she was beautiful, the most beautiful woman on the earth, one kiss of her lips enough to turn any man to her slave, one look from her eye enough to make mortals weep tears that turned to diamonds when they struck the earth.  She lived in the heart of the forest, a spirit of the wind and the earth, and all worshipped her, and all were afraid.

Then, as things will, the world changed.  Men discovered about iron and metal and steel and steam, and before you knew it there were railways and factories and roads and ships and empires and before you could say ‘where’d I put my sacred rowan branch?’ the wizards and witches of this world were discovering that actually, the spells they used to weave from lighting in the sky, they could now cast from electricity in the wires; and the gods that used to wear nothing but a well placed fig leaf over their private parts, now liked to dress up in denim, and that really all things considered, while no one would actually want to fly Easyjet, it still beat a freezing cold broom stick clamped between the thighs.  And so the Faerie Court began to wither and decline, its power fading as the magic went where the life was, moving to the city, until one day, it became no more than a shadow of the past, its glory withered to nothing.  And then one day, it vanished entirely.

Except…

… except shortly after the Faerie Court disappeared, rumours started of another Court.  A new Court, something different.  Rumours of a place in the heart of the city where the lights never went out, rumours of a woman too beautiful to look at, of a palace in Tokyo where the servants of this new court danced from dawn to dusk, and dusk to dawn, of music with a pounding bass beat that, once it was in your mind, would never leave.  Rumours of fashion magazines in which eyes of the models really, and quite really, did follow you round the room, of enchantments made in the back of fast cars.  Rumours of a new kind of faerie dust, of a dust breathed in on the air that fulfilled your every desire until suddenly, you had no more desires left to feel and just danced and danced and danced because that was all your body was capable of doing, until you too dissolved, and became dust on the air.  And in time, these rumours were given a name, and that name was Lady Neon.  Strange, everyone said, how quickly her enemies fell, and how easily she made new friends.  Remarkable how quickly people became accostomed to the idea of the Neon Court; almost as if it had always been there, or as if the Faerie Court had never quite gone away.